Fuel dispensers are equipped with flow meters that measure fuel as it is dispensed. The amount of fuel dispensed, as measured by the flow meter, is used to arrive at a total amount that the customer must pay to complete the transaction. In a perfect world, no one would have to worry about being cheated by dishonest individuals. Unfortunately, many individuals install fraudulent devices to cause the fuel dispenser to register dispensed fuel in amounts greater than actually dispensed, necessitating the need to provide counter measures to correct for these fraudulent activities.
Dishonest individuals may attempt to alter or replace the flow meter such that it indicates that more fuel has been dispensed than actually has been dispensed. This results in the customer paying for more fuel than they actually received. While many states have Bureaus of Weights and Measures which periodically test fuel dispensers for accuracy, such inspections may not be frequent enough to catch the perpetrators, or may include test points that are known and the fraudulent activities occur in such a fashion that the test points do not reflect the fraudulent activities.
Such fraud is of concern not only to the customers, but also to the companies that manufacture fuel dispensers. These companies do not wish to risk customer wrath or damage to the goodwill of their company by being associated with cheating fueling environments. However, these companies are usually not in a position to create hardware to catch the dishonest individuals. Thus, there is a demand in the fuel dispensing industry to provide ways to eliminate or catch fraud affected through the flow meter.
The assignee of the present invention also owns several patents relating to fraud prevention and detection, such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,109,477; 6,296,148; and 6,213,172, all of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entireties. While each is adequate in its own manner, offering more choices to the fueling companies that brand fueling environments helps provide a competitive advantage while at the same time allowing redundancies to be created, thus increasing the likelihood that the fraud is detected and eliminated.